Mar 02, 2016

Re:Joyce Episode 307 - Pastry & Pregnancy

Comments

"telling poor Mr Breen that he pees upward" doesn't work unless the card has four letters "U P UP" but Bloom says "What is it? U.P.?" so there can only be two letters. And he doesn't look for acronyms, so there's no periods after the U or P. Anyway, "peeing upward" is not a likely libel in anyone's book, so I suggest the letters UP might have been written:
U
P
and read upwards as "P U"-- you stink.

I agree with Tim Finnegan that saying that someone ‘pees up’ isn't an insult. And wouldn’t a respectable lady like Mrs Breen be embarrassed to show such a crude message to Bloom? ‘U.P.’ must have been a commonly understood expression, or Bloom would express bafflement about it.

The 1903 Sang Dictionary of J.C.Hotten points to ‘‘It’s all up with him’, often pronounced U.P. naming the two letters separately.’

Here’s how it’s used in two books:

‘The conversation was here interrupted by a moan from the sick woman.
'Oh!' said the young mag, turning his face towards the bed, as if he had previously quite forgotten the patient, 'it's all U.P. there, Mrs. Corney.'
'It is, is it, sir?' asked the matron.
'If she lasts a couple of hours, I shall be surprised.' said the apothecary's apprentice’

Oliver Twist chapter 24

‘Sophia seemed to be in a kind of coma. The distortion of her handsome face was more marked as time passed. The doctor spoke now and then in a low voice. He said that the attack had ultimately been determined by cold produced by rapid motion in the automobile….On the landing out-side the bedroom, the doctor murmured to him: "U.P." And Dick nodded.’

Arnold Bennett, The Old Wives Tales, Bk 4 Chapter IV

My old tutor Charles Peake told me a version of the WW1 song, Fred Karno’s Army, which goes

‘'We are Fred Karno's army
With us it's all u.p.
We cannot march we cannot shoot
What bloody use are we?'

So the sender is implying that Breen is finished/ done for. Perhaps the postcard inspired his dream of the Ace of Spades?

By the way isn’t it funny that Breen has gone to the lawyer’s office to start a libel action about an anonymous card, and he’s left the card with his wife?!